The Sun-Herald newspaper of southwest Florida has this January 28 story about the fact that Florida has 30 qualified parties. A party can be ballot-qualified in Florida just by writing a letter to the Secretary of State, listing its state officers.

The reason Florida doesn’t have a crowded general election ballot for president is that a party can’t automatically qualify a presidential nominee for the November ballot unless it is on the ballot in at least one other state, and unless it produces a list of 27 presidential elector candidates who are registered members of the party. Although this requirement isn’t that difficult, most of the qualified parties of Florida are so insubstantial, they can’t even do that.

The reason Florida doesn’t have a crowded general election ballot for office other than president is that it charges non-presidential candidates a very high filing fee (6% of the office’s annual salary, which means approximately $9,000 for Congress).

The TIME Magazine of January 27 has this interview with Clay Mulford. Mulford was in charge of ballot access for Ross Perot. Michael Bloomberg had met with him earlier in the month, so TIME mostly asked Mulford about what Bloomberg and he had discussed.

The interview is somewhat misleading, because it says that Bloomberg would need 74,108 signatures in Texas. In reality, he would only need 43,991 if he accepted the nomination of any of the three Texas parties that wants to nominate him. Thanks to Earl Divoky for this news.

At 8:45 pm eastern time, with 73% counted, the results are: Obama 201,171; Clinton 99,824; Edwards 68,422; Kucinich 405. For CNN’s election returns page, which is being continuously updated, see here.